navbar

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Paper Mache Marquee Letters

I would say this project is kind of a practice- run for me. I have located large metal letters at Hobby Lobby and plan on making my own diy marquee letters out of them. While shopping for be 1,000 other things I needed at Hobby Lobby I came across paper mache letters (which are already book marked on my computer to order from some random site). How do they have EVERYTHING I need?! The problem with Hobby Lobby for me is that they are closed on Sundays. And what day to I always want to go? Yeah, Sunday. But the letters must have been calling my name because for ONCE I remembered to go there on a weekday!

So I decided to go with the word "LOVE" I will tell you that I almost lost my mind with this project. My first run I tried to use the same string of lights for all of the letters, glued them all in and plugged them in with such excitement. The end result was NOT exciting. At all. It just didn't work. The weight of the lights and the weight of the letters was a fail. So I went to sleep and the next morning went back at it. I removed all of the lights, and glue and decided to use one strand of lights per letter. Excessive maybe, but it works.

You need:

-paper mache letters

-razor blade

-Paint/spray paint

-Christmas lights

-glue gun

-screw driver

-First I removed the front of the letters with a razor blade.

-after removing the front, I spray painted them gold

-once the paint is dried I marked where I wanted to poke the holes with a marker

-I poked the holes with a small screw driver (I would recommend poking from the inside out)

-get your lights and before you glue them, practice how you want to put them in. (I used four different light strings. I bought small packs from hobby lobby that have 20 lights per strand.) I would also recommend setting them up so the last light you poke through is towards the bottom of the letter.

- poke the light through the hole and add a dab of hot glue between the base of the light and the letter

I am in the process of doing these now. I originally bought globe string lights, but apparently the 8" letters (which is all I could find @ my nearest Hobby Lobby) are too small for them and I don't want to risk a fire with the lights actually touching the sides, so I'm glad this still looks good with regular christmas lights!! I'll leave ya a link when I'm finished if you want :-). I'm doing "AMOUR" which is just "LOVE" in another language ^_^